On a chilly Thursday afternoon outside the Boney Courthouse in downtown Anchorage, Tupe Smith and her husband, Mike Pese, were joined by members of Alaska’s Samoan community and those outraged by the state’s drive to make an example out of them.
Smith and Pese have become the face of the State of Alaska’s effort to prosecute nearly a dozen Samoan U.S nationals living in Whittier with felony voter fraud, cases that attorneys for the couple say boil down to honest confusion over the voting rights of people from American Samoa. They’re Americans by name, but don’t have voting rights in the country due to long-standing — patently racist — legal precedent.
That – along with Alaska State Troopers descending on Whittier in 2023 – was an unwelcome surprise to many who are now facing up to 10 years in prison…